


make this chaos count

by superstarrgirl



Category: The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Angst, M/M, Spoilers for The Death Cure, Suicide Attempt, and pretty obvious newmas i really didn't try to hide it, crank!newt, i obviously didn't handle the death cure too well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 19:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2594195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superstarrgirl/pseuds/superstarrgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(how rare and beautiful it is to even exist)</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>falling feels like flying until you hit the ground</p>
            </blockquote>





	make this chaos count

**Author's Note:**

> So I just finished The Death Cure and Newt's scene was literally so heartbreaking. If you haven't read the books or just watched the movie and dislike spoilers, go back! If you don't mind spoilers/having your heart ripped out of your chest like I feel like I did, read ahead. Title and summary quote come from 'Saturn' and 'Jupiter' both performed by Sleeping at Last. Either can be a companion to this fic. Also tried a bit of a different writing style with this one, so let me know what you think!

In life, there is insanity. 

||

Insanity is indescribable.

He sees Tommy and Minho and Brenda and Jorge and he recognizes them and he wants to reach them and feel them and touch them but –

(his mess of a mind says no so his hands stay still)

Tommy’s staring at him like he’s never seen him before, and Newt almost shrieks and yells and cries because he was supposed to stop this, Tommy was supposed to save Newt from himself.

“Come with us.” Minho pleads, as though it were that easy. As though this were a choice, as though disease and illness can be taken and passed off like gifts.

He tries to tell them, tries to force the words out of his mouth – _my own mind is tearing me apart my brain is turning against me I don’t want this please_ – but his teeth are stuck together with tar, weaved with wire. He cannot speak more than what has been written for him, cannot stray from the script, from the storyline, and this has been in the cards from day one.

|heroes aren’t meant to survive|

“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here and asking me to leave with you. A lot of bloody nerve. The sight of you makes me sick.” Newt spits. Tommy’s face falls and Newt wants to retract the words because he hears the hatred and the power but he doesn’t care because he’s living with Cranks and with every passing day he sees himself in those around him and it’s _terrifying_.

(You were supposed to save me, Tommy.)

Minho’s speaking, words pleading and desperate, Newt swings the weapon and threatens to shoot. _Wants_ to shoot, needs to prove that this _whatever_ that is eating his brain is real and there is no cure.

Never was, never bloody will be, don’t you get it?

They give in eventually, resign themselves to the hard truth that Newt is more monster than man, that the Flare cannot be cured, and they leave. He watches them go, wants to demand if Tommy read the note or if it’s still unopened. He wants to hate them – wants to hate Tommy most of all – but it’s impossible to hate when you love so much. 

He puts his head in his hands and prays that redemption is more than a distant dream.

||

When he rests, fitful bouts of sleep colored with nightmares, he dreams of the past.

Those first few weeks in the Glade (when life sucked but he was still Newt and he still had Alby and Minho and the world wasn’t shot to pieces) pass in blurs of visions and fragments of sentences. Words whisper through his mind, promises to protect those he cares for, promises to be protected. 

He remembers scrambling up the wall, scorching deep marks into the palms of his hands. Remembers the ivy wrapped around his hands, remembers thinking _there’s no other way, no other choice_. Remembers pushing off the Maze and releasing the ivy.

Falling feels like flying – until he hits the ground.

||

There was a boy and he had nice eyes and a kind smile and brown eyes (and Newt thinks his name was Tommy because Tommy is a nice name and Newt likes the name Tommy because it tastes sweet like sugar on his tongue) and when he smiles at Newt, eyes crinkling at the corner, Newt feels home. 

_except home doesn’t exist for gladers and the world keeps on turning_  

Newt thinks Tommy made him happy. Newt thinks Tommy gave him a reason to fight and a reason to carry on past death and disease and loss. Newt thinks Tommy gave him courage, pushed him headfirst into battle and told him to never look back.

There are moments when he flickers between madness and sanity, loses his balance and almost stumbles off the thin line he’s walking. The people around him --

when did they become people and not cranks maybe it was when newt became the same 

\-- lose their minds with every passing day and Newt feels control slipping with every shaky breath and curl of his fists and some days he just wants to give in but.

But then there’s Tommy.

A bright light at the end of a dark tunnel – a reminder that life can get better – a fleeting thought of what once was – a bitter memoire of what never got to be.

||

**Kill me. If you’ve ever been my friend, kill me.**

||

He sees a boy with brown hair and brown eyes and he knows him. Knows that face and those eyes because a boy like Tommy is not a boy you ever forget.

Tommy offers to save him, begs him to come with him and find a cure but Newt wants to shriek because there is no cure. There can be no cure for this – _there can be no escape from yourself._

“Just shut up, you shuck traitor. Didn’t you read my note? You can’t do one last, lousy thing for me? Gotta be the hero, like always? I hate you! I always hated you!” 

The words taste like lie, like whoever’s saying them isn’t Newt, but it’s his voice and his mouth and god he hates Tommy but he loves him too and he never asked for any of this. “It was all your fault! You could’ve stopped them when the first Creators died. You could’ve figured out a way. But no! You had to keep it going, try to save the world, be the hero. And you came to the Maze and never stopped. All you care about is yourself! Admit it! Gotta be the one people remember, the one people worship! We should have thrown you down the Box hole!” Anger is burning through him, and he’s fallen over the line, tumbled into an abyss from which there’s no coming back.

Pain glows on Tommy’s face, electric and real and someone yells, Tommy yells back.

You could have saved us, Newt wants to whisper. You could have saved _me_.

“I hate you, Tommy! I hate you I hate you I hate you! After all I did for you, after all the freaking klunk I went through in the bloody Maze, you can’t do the one and only thing I’ve ever asked you to do! I can’t even look at your ugly shuck face!” He vibrates with rage, with just wanting this to be over.

(But the Trials have never been over, never really finished, this is just another one and this one Tommy _failed_ )

Tommy pleads with him to go, to let him _save_ him, and Newt becomes alive with rage. He flies at Tommy, knocking him to the ground, something shoots past his face but misses and he pins the boy down. “I should rip your eyes out.” He snarls, insanity filling every word, every syllable. “Teach you a lesson in stupidity. Why’d you come over here? You expected a bloody hug? Huh? A nice sit-down to talk about the good times in the Glade?” Tommy looks so terrified and it stings but Newt doesn’t _care_ because he’s a Crank why doesn’t Tommy get that why is Tommy so set on saving him when Newt can’t save himself?

“You wanna know why I have this limp, Tommy? Did I ever tell you? No, I don’t think I did.” The past is washing over him, an icy tidal wave of memories, and the numbness and pain almost knocks him. “I tried to kill myself in the Maze. Climbed halfway up one of those bloody walls and jumped right off. Alby found me and dragged me back to the Glade right before the Doors closed. I hated the place, Tommy. I hated every second of every day. And it was all…your… _fault_!” He’s shrieking and howling, made of insanity and the Flare and nothing more than what _Tommy_ has done.

|you created a monster, little boy, and you can’t defeat monsters when they’re you|

He grabs the gun Thomas is reaching for and pulls it to his own forehead with strength he did not know he possessed. “Now make amends!” He yells, pushing on Tommy’s finger against the trigger. “Kill me before I become one of those cannibal monsters! Kill me! I trusted _you_ with that note! No one else! Now do it!” Tommy shakes his head, refuses, and Newt presses the gun harder into his own temple.

“Make amends! Repent for what you did! Kill me you shuck coward. Prove you can do the right thing. Put me out of my misery.” This is what loss is, Tommy, Newt tries to say. This is what redemption is; this is what victory tastes like.

“Newt, maybe we can…”

“Shut up! Just shut up! I trusted you! Now do it!”

“I can’t.”

“Do it!”

{insanity is close and looming and he will not go down like that he _will not_ }

“Kill me or I’ll kill you. Kill me! Do it!”

“Newt…”

“Do it before I become one of them!” Fear rips through him, grips his heart in a way that is almost indescribable. “KILL ME!”

And then sanity grips him one last time – his head clears as he stares down at the boy under him and he just wants this to be over. He just wants to be normal, wants to survive, but this is not survival. This is disease, this is war-ravaged brain, this is the stuff no one ever warns you about.

“Please, Tommy.” Tears leak out of his eyes and God it hurts so much but death is easy and quick and sweet. Being trapped inside your own mind is a glass cage. “Please.”

He feels the weight of his words and the pressure of the gun, and when Tommy pulls the trigger it’s almost like a new beginning.

||

In life, there is insanity.

In death --

 

{there is nothing}


End file.
